Personal Histories

deportations

Jeno Muhlrad

Born: November 3, 1888, Ujpest, Hungary

Jeno was the youngest of five children born to Jewish parents living in a suburb of Budapest. His father was a wholesale merchant who sold beer to restaurants and stores. After receiving a university diploma, Jeno became a pharmacist. He and his wife, Aranka, and their two children, Eva and Andras, shared a large old house in Ujpest with Jeno's father and other members of the extended family.

1933-39: My friends and family have helped me raise the large amount of money I need to lease my own pharmacy. Because of anti-Jewish restrictions, I still can't own a pharmacy in my own name. But leasing will give me a lot more independence than I had when I was just another pharmacist's employee. We've moved into a nice, modern apartment near the pharmacy in downtown Ujpest. Aranka helps me out at work while Eva and Andras go to school.

1940-44: It has been only a few weeks since the Germans invaded Hungary, but already we are being deported out of Hungary by train in cattle cars. There are 70 or 80 of us crammed in together with just one bucket of water for drinking and one empty bucket for relieving ourselves. I'm trying to boost Eva's morale by joking that I'd hoped her first trip abroad would be more pleasant.

Jeno and his family were among the 435,000 Hungarian Jews deported to Auschwitz in the early summer of 1944. He was later moved to a camp in Bavaria where he perished.